Thursday, 24 May 2012

i have some good news tonight! do you remember how i talked to my mom for the first time in just about forever on mother's day? well, we made a plan to talk again tonight...and would you believe it went pretty well?

we stuck to relatively safe topics like work and our pets, but still. i think we were gentler with our newly sprouting relationship during this talk. conversation was more superficial, but maybe that's all our connection can take right now.

blessedly, there were no discussions of our shared past or our mistakes or the awkward family dynamics that plague us and make people fume and rage at christmas. it feels a little false, but we might need this gentleness and lightness if we're going to go deeper at some point.

and you know what? i think i'm okay with that. there was a time when i wouldn't have been, but it's cool. maybe in these silly, superficial discussions we'll gradually remember that we sincerely like and appreciate each other on some level. we've been there before. i hope we can go there again. gently. with hands that hold this thing as it grows.

in the last few days, i've been emailing with a friend who's having a rough time.

you know those times in life when it feels like the odds are stacked against a good outcome?

if you want me to be less delicate about it, i mean the times when you're standing in the middle of a relentless shitstorm of shitty shit. i know you know the kinda shitty shit i'm talking about.

well, in the midst of all this difficulty, she's feeling like she's torn out some stitches. metaphorically, i mean. undoing the life mending she's done recently.

what i told her was this: i'm learning that mending is a complicated thing...often it takes more than one pass to get the mend you want: to anchor it properly or to make it last or make it count. sometimes a mend that sticks isn't all that pretty and takes more tries than you might think. this has definitely been the case with the jeans i mended a while back.

if you remember, these are the jeans i was wearing when i got into my bike accident last year and, somehow, they keep on loosening and finding new ways to tear or come apart or fray.

it almost feels like a test or a metaphor, so here's my vow: i assure you, jeans, i will continue to come back to you again and again and again to figure out all the myriad ways that you (and, by extension, i) need mending. i'm going to stitch you up in every way i know how so that a way forward is possible. one with integrity and purpose.

so there it is. i almost feel like i should call out, "i can't quit you, boo!"

this was a spectacularly big leaping day! do you know what i did? i got on the back of a motorcycle and went for a ride. mind you, it was with someone i trust very much and know is a safe rider and took all the safety precautions like gear and helmets and everything really seriously...but still!

i haven't even been able to get back on a bicycle since my bike accident in march 2011. the last time i tried, i spent the morning weeping. it didn't go well at all. it makes me realize, you know, that sometimes mending can't be approached in a direct way.

i got around the intense, gripping, controlling fear of getting back on a bike by being a passenger instead of driving, by going out on a different kind of bike that feels different and sounds different and by going for that first ride in a different city altogether. these are the things that allowed me to go for it. i was being too literal before: of course i couldn't just get on a bicycle and calmly return to my daily riding habits - especially in the streets of the city that almost claimed my fucking life! as if! that's so clear now.

i'm not sure what the next step is in terms of getting over my block with biking, but i feel so much more brazen now. i feel more ready to tackle it since i got out there and went fast and leaned into the turns and felt the wind in my face and looked up at the wide open sky and remembered why i love biking so much. why i love when there's no steel cage around me.

Wednesday, 23 May 2012

today was all about keeping things loose. there's a mindstate i reach when i don't grasp too tightly to plans or expectations or judgments. it feels really damn good.

i suppose it could be read as cool distance or dispassion or something, but that's not what it is. it's a kind of listening and noticing that i forgot i knew how to do. a cool side effect of keeping a loose hold on things is that my intuition - that gut-level sensing - is coming back to life as something i can call on and draw from and trust. so very very cool.

i had a performance in montreal tonight, and my lover, j, kept asking me - "so, have you chosen what you're going to perform? do you know what you're doing yet?" i kept saying a light-hearted no and laughing about it. i was waiting for things to call on me rather than choosing them in a more arbitrary way. that's better than deciding at a surface level. and it totally happened. all of a sudden, i knew what to perform: what i would feel connected to and what the audience might best respond to. it changed once more at the event itself. in a moment of quiet, i realized that one of the pieces didn't need to be performed and something else did. so i switched it out without any rehearsal at all.

i'm not sure where that ballsy trust came from, but i knew it would be just fine. i didn't need to look anything up or rehearse or double-check or doubt. i could feel that it was there. and it was. it worked out fine. how's that for mending self-trust? standing willingly on that beautiful precipice of risk. god, i've missed it.

lately, i've been pulling my head out of the sand of my own personal circumstances and looking around again.

because of looming money and health concerns, i sort of forgot about other people. specifically, how much i like to give and do for other people.

i admire the whole idea that, in helping others, you help yourself. not in a rescuing way, mind you. in a solidarity way. standing with people in whatever's happening. gently being with what is, no matter what the reality is.

one of the first things i decided to do was to restart this daily practice i used to do – a standing meditation that's all about filling yourself up with light and then giving of the overflow. i find it's a very healthy way of doing this whole giving thing.

i put out a call on facebook about a week-and-a-half ago to see who might be interested in receiving a little extra light, and do you know what? i got 41 requests! from people in all kinds of binds: living with cancer, preparing for surgery, recovering from surgery, dealing with old injuries, a sick mother, money stress, a dying husband, an ongoing battle with depression, addictions, chronic pain, a bad winter at work, loss of motivation, relationship struggles, feeling lost and wanting to find a good path again. in a different state of mind, it might have been overwhelming...but i found it sort of beautiful. we're united in struggle, as it were. how human we all are!

there are times when i feel utterly hopeless about all the suffering and trials and struggles that people face all around me. but, there's a measure of healing available in giving what i can instead of focusing on my attachments to a certain reality or outcome. simply sending washes of light to everyone on the list each day and letting the universe manage the details.

what a great balance this strikes between expressing care and accepting what is. also, it's amazing how much of a lift i feel in taking myself out of the centre of my concerns and remembering the collective whole. i'm sending out a hell yeah to the power of community!

friends, i've been doing much mending on many fronts but, sadly, i haven't been recording it on here! sorry to keep you out of the loop. hopefully my updates will help you catch up on my exploits. starting with may 18th!

as a freelance writer and editor and artist and community organizer, i don't claim much downtime. it seems like there's always something to do...nay, many many somethings i should do. it's gotten to the point where it feels normal to have demands on me every minute that i'm not sleeping. but, do you know what? i've been thinking lately that this is a crappy reality that needs my immediate attention; an immediate shift. it's something that needs to change. boundaries, folks. boundaries. they are wonderful things.

a few months back, i took a free, online energy audit: how much energy i have, what gives me energy, where i'm putting my energy. the results were scary. 16 out of 20 questions showed that my life habits were breaking down rather than building up my energy. the results further informed me that an energy crisis is imminent in my life. i don't disagree.

there are sooooo many demands. my brain is babysitting each of them at any given time: love, dynamics, work, money, goals, deadlines. it's hard to be disciplined enough to pull back from these demands and just be. to turn off my responses to everything, relax and go into my own world.

as i was unpacking my books tonight, it occurred to me that disappearing into some non-required reading that's purely for pleasure used to be one of the main ways i relaxed. for whatever reason, it's something that i haven't done much of lately.

i decided to change that. i dug out a book by isabel allende that i meant to read last summer. as i sat there, happily gulping down the story, i actually physically felt my brain knit itself back together and regroup from the myriad directions it had galloped off in since i woke up. this is the first step in what will, i'm sure, be a multi-stage process toward being more respectful of all my human needs: food, rest, recreation and the like.

other triumphs of may 18th: i took a 45-minute bath in the middle of a hectic day in order to ease a tension headache and accepted that my apartment would not be clean or organized before i left town for the weekend. bonus points on the latter because i trusted my friend, who was catsitting for me not to judge me about it. hell yeah.

Friday, 18 May 2012

today was the international day against homophobia and transphobia, and i spent the evening writing and making a big canvas banner with teens and twenty-somethings at a youth drop-in event.

we started out by swapping stories about our experiences of homophobia and other gender crap. as we talked, i recorded some of the words they used on little bits of paper: hate, fear, ignorance, hope, protection, rights, courage.

by the time our conversation started drawing to a close an hour later, we had dozens of words on little slips of paper. i spread them out on a big double-table so they were all visible, and the youth arranged and rearranged them on the table (magnetic poetry style) until they found word combos that inspired them or until the words formed statements they agreed with. some of them made it onto the banner.

it was really cool to watch them interact with the words and get excited about finding ways to talk about hate and love. it reminded me how essential it is to have words to use that accurately reflect experience. i loved seeing how making those connection between words and experience freed up brain space that had, before, been occupied by silence or question marks. such a beautiful thing.

i don't plan on becoming a parent, but i love being a mentor. at a certain point, it becomes a moral necessity to go back for the kids who are living the kinds of things you lived and offer them a leg up.

feels good and right to be there for them. to help mend the harm they face and encourage them and listen.

Thursday, 17 May 2012

there are a lot of mendables emerging as i unpack boxes at my new place.

one of the many things in need of mending is this art stand, which somehow broke in the move. it's part of a set i bought at the dollar store a while back. mending it is a tad absurd, i know, given that the dollar store is basically the hub of cheap, disposable, badly-made throwaway items. but, because it's a surprisingly durable (and useful!) little thing, i decided i would attempt to mend it.

truth be told, the broken stand has been sitting on my coffee table for days, sprawled out much like the picture above. i would look at it and decide to work on it another time. later, always later. maybe tomorrow?

mostly, the avoidance was due to that fact that i had no idea what was wrong or how to go about fixing it. i didn't take a closer look, though, to settle the matter; instead, i avoided doing anything about it and would, every now and then, glance at the thing semi-guiltily and ponder: were there pieces missing? would i have to glue the two halves in place and render the hinges unusable, or was there a way to keep the hinges intact? maybe i should just throw it out?

wow is this mending project ever making some of my patterns abundantly clear. if i were to be thematically appropriate in describing these revelations, vis-a-vis tonight's post, i would say that it puts my patterns on display. (yes, i went there. sorry.)

anyway, when i sat down to fiddle with the thing, i found that i just needed to snap the two pieces back into place, and it was pretty much as good as new. just like that.

you know, some mending ends up being much easier than you first suspect. it's cool when that happens. i'm discovering that procrastination is, for the most part, hilariously unnecessary. case in point, my friends. all that worry wasted. i'm sitting here shaking my head and laughing at myself...

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

sorry for my absence, lovelies. i went into a little cave of solitude to prepare to contact my mom again for the first time in a year-and-a-half, and i'm just coming out of that.

why now? that's actually what she asked when i called. well, lately, i've been feeling like my life is on hold. stuck. like i'm in a purgatory of sorts. without roots there are no wings, as they say. the absence of blood family has been making my life feel somewhere between full and empty, and i wanted to change that. besides, i've been having an intense feeling of rootlessness lately...a lack of personal context. a tree with no forest, you know? i've been feeling like an orphan, which is weird because both of my parents are still living. it's just that, for a number of reasons, they've been out of reach.

i used to be really close to my mother, actually. but there were some things that happened in my childhood that i've been having trouble forgiving her for. i confronted her about them three years ago, and we had a very hard, very emotional conversation about it. it opened up so much for me. rage, actually. pure, white-hot rage. and i started to feel unsafe around her because of the nature of what had happened. it was like it all happened yesterday.

needless to say, things were really awkward afterward. she kept trying to get in touch with me by email, but i honestly had nothing to say. i would click "reply" and then stare at the blank window for an hour or more before hitting the "cancel" button. what to say? what could i possibly say?

we had a brief reunion a couple years back, just before my niece was born, and we saw each other a few times around then. it was actually pretty good between us for a while, but then the shit from the past started coming up again. i think it was in connection to my mom caring for my little niece. kids are so vulnerable, you know? brings up fierce protective, shielding feelings in me...along with whatever the opposite, experiential, childhood side of that is.

but, lately, i've really wanted to call her. i wanted to be the one to make the step and mend the distance. for the sake of family. i want a family.

what would i say, though? what would she say? would she want to talk to me? would we get frustrated or hurt in all the usual ways and give up on each other again? i wasn't sure what to expect, but i knew it was getting past the point where the distance between us could reasonably be bridged. i felt a looming expiration date on our relationship. because there does come a point of cooling (or irrelevance?), when a connection atrophies. it can happen no matter the former importance of the person. i don't talk to my dad, for example. i've fallen out of touch with my first love. i'm barely acquaintances with my former fiancee. (a la somebody i used to know.)

if these incredibly important connections can fade into the background, anything is possible. i *so* didn't want that to happen with my mom. despite our differences and the ways that we falter and fuck up, i do love her. i love her so much, and i didn't want the past to hold us hostage anymore. besides, the tension between giving up on the relationship and giving in to the urge to call was getting unbearable. i decided i would call and try to collapse the inertia. at least something would happen. we wouldn't be on hold anymore.

i held the phone in my hand for a good 30 minutes before dialing. i thought about how hard it had been to come out to her, and then laughed to remember how well it ended up going. all the same, my heart was pounding, and my stomach was in knots. i dialed the number, and then stared at the digits on the screen. it took me another 10 minutes for me to press the "call" button. why is this stuff so hard??

that was around 9pm on mother's day. i had hoped to call her on the saturday, the day before, because the high drama of making contact with her for the first time since 2010 on mother's day seemed a bit much. but saturday came and went, with me mostly ignoring the phone and my plan to talk to her and la-la-la-ing throughout the day with my fingers stuck in my ears. i organized my new place, napped, thought about calling, distracted myself from those thoughts with music and busy work and then spent an inordinate amount of time reading things on facebook. and, would you look at that? the day was over. it was definitely too late to call now.

i was all set to avoid calling her on mother's day, too, but then i went to my yoga centre for our weekly satsang, and the whole thing was about mothers: biological mothers, spiritual mothers, divine mother. all the songs were about mothers and mothering. by the end, i threw up my hands in the air, and i said, "okay, okay, universe! i'll call!"

i sang one of the songs from satsang all the way home, "mother carry me / your child i'll always be / mother carry me / down to the sea..." the light in the trees was beautiful as i walked past the park near my place. dogs were rolling around and playing together on the grass. all the park benches were full, and traffic was gentle. i was hopeful and excited about the possibility of a reunion with my mom. it felt ripe. like it was time. i felt ready for anything.

the trouble with this kind of poetic, triumphant state is that you eventually come crashing back down to earth. (i never remember that part. oops.) she answered the phone, and i said, "hi mom, it's me. it's luna." a stunned silence, and then, "oh. hello." not the epic, grateful reunion i had been hoping for, but at least she didn't hang up. in the long silence that followed, cello music started to play in my chest - you know the kind of hum when you're feeling everything all at once? i think that was the part i wasn't prepared for...for the full emotional summary of the past to flood into me before our conversation had even begun. i started to regret calling.

there were three or four moments in the first few minutes that i wanted to hang up. i really did. some of the things she said. ugh. and there were points when she was completely, compassionlessly silent. when she expressed her obvious surprise that i was still in a relationship after two-and-a-half years, i felt pretty done. (you know how parents can do those passive aggressive things that cut you deep deep deep? she's an expert at that.) but i breathed in and out and stayed on the phone. i kept deciding to stay. every mend happens one stitch at a time, and it sometimes seems as though the two sides are never going to come together again. but they do. and so, i measure my faith in this process with my experience of mending. imperfect or not, almost everything will mend.

eventually, we waded into safer territory, like discussing my grandmother's health and my adorable niece and our work lives. that part of the conversation was pretty good, actually. it reminded me of how we used to talk. loose, open, laughing. we agreed to talk weekly for a while, until things between us re-stabilized. we set a date for our next call, and said our goodbyes.

what i wasn't prepared for was the fallout after the call. my god...it was like one of those time lapse videos on repeat. the over-stim was intense. i wept and got angry and wept and called all my important people and ranted to them and then cleaned everything in sight. it's taken a couple days to re-emerge from all that.

am i glad i called? i'm not sure. but this relationship was tugging on my skirt like a needy kid, so i knew it was time to do something. i guess time will tell what's possible.

Friday, 11 May 2012

crazy that we're almost halfway through may! so much good mending has been done so far this year, and i want to help facilitate even more mending in my community.

yesterday, my friend j.b. sent me a link to a story in the new york times about a group in amsterdam called the repair cafe foundation, which started these drop-in mending events called repair cafes. the idea behind a repair cafe is to create a space for community members to bring in items that need mending or repair and connect them with experts who can help them do the job: electricians, seamstresses, clock experts, etc. it was intended as a way of fighting back against the mindset of things being disposable rather than mendable.

i love this idea, and i'm going to organize a repair cafe for ottawa. i encourage you to do the same in your town!

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

amongst the piles and piles of abandoned junk left in the cupboards of my new kitchen, there was this beautiful teapot. a little beacon of awesome.

i think we're the same age, me and this teapot. in any case, it looks like my childhood.

when i take off the lid and look inside, i see it has the marks of time on its surface. like us, it bears the stretch marks of scalding and cooling: the thread-like roads that mark the lasting costs of change.

you know, at the time, all that heat seems worth the risk of breaking. and it sometimes is. there are experiences in which cooling is all the mending you need. when, after an ending, balance is restored with the gesture of distance.

but, no matter the details of a given story, there's always a price to be paid for the vessel. love and lust are like that, i think. we pay for the heat we hold. even if it's just for a brief moment. the risks of love and the enduring need for it cause the yearning for expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction. this cycle of dissolving and reforming bonds – seemingly at a cellular level.

we all warp and wear sometimes...feel askew or too heavy from the weight and heat inside us. when it comes down to it, a temperature difference is all it takes for cracks to form: tepid vs boiling, cool vs frozen.

like me, this teapot has learned the difference between worn,used and broken. they're nothing alike. each of the three is a separate reality to grasp. or maybe a decision to make at the meeting point of possibility?

i see worn as a state that results from an agreement to be an unflinching part of life, whatever the cost. scraping your knees as you tumble down, laughing. in this case, damage is incidental rather than inflicted. i.e.: to brew tea, you need a pot; teapots chip and crack and wear with use, but isn't the tea worth it?

i see used as a feeling that results from actions that are charged with a negative intent. actions that result in a feeling of betrayal after an expectation or set of expectations isn't fulfilled. it's the damage caused by (a) an actual betrayal or (b) a schism in reality that feels like one. i.e.: i thought you'd want to fill my teapot again tonight! don't you like my tea?

mind you, of use is different. i see that as an eyes-wide-open decision to give something of yourself, no matter the cost. i.e.: i have a great love of you, and you have a great love of tea. i will be the vessel to bring you said tea, even if it burns me. there's power and transparency behind it.

i see brokenness as resulting from a careless collision of borders. it happens when one thing or person is so hard as to break another. i.e.: using a hammer to drain the tea from the pot instead of attempting to pour it.

it seems like we take turns on these different roads throughout our lives. if we're lucky, they meet, and we get to remind ourselves of options.

i remember, years ago, learning the origin of the word trivia: it comes from tri, meaning three, and via, meaning road, referring to the place where three roads meet. this was the place where travelers used to gather and exchange knowledge.

to me, that's the essence of the whole thing: life, love, living, loving. we're these travelers on these different roads. on occasion, we stumble upon a meeting place where we have a moment to sit and breathe, listen and speak. and remember.

Tuesday, 8 May 2012

tonight, i'm going to mend something hot pink because (a) if my mood right now were expressed as a colour, it would be that one, and, (b) hot pink is aptly named. i love it so much.

this shirt reminds me of touring lady musicians and spontaneous fun. i bought it from the merch table of a vancouver-based band sometime in 2005. that was back when le cagibi was cafe esperanza, and i was organizing catcall with abigail lapell in montreal. (some of you will actually remember that!)

anyway, i still wear this shirt. i love it almost as much as hot pink. there was a hole under one arm that needed mending, so i took care of that...

...then, in tribute to hot pink, i added a little extra sequin love to the patch on the back of the shirt. while wearing a 100% hot pink outfit. yeeeeaaaaah, baby.

Monday, 7 May 2012

i found this clock all undone in one of my unpacked boxes tonight – the two parts had totally separated. i guess it was a result of the cold in the storage unit. anyway, i decided to have a go at it with some crazy glue.

one of the mistakes i often make is not holding a glued surface together for long enough before testing to see if it has set properly. which i guess is true of any bond being tested prematurely? it requires such patience to sit and wait and time it well.

happily, all is well with the mend. the crazy glue worked perfectly. now to find the charger for my rechargeable batteries so i can make this thing go...

one of the things that i've realized recently is that mending is rarely a one-time event. this shirt has been one of my favourites for years, and i've mended it at least five times since i bought it at this little shop on st-viateur in montreal in 2003.

a lesson i've learned from clothes specifically is that we have to keep an eye on the weak points because that's where the tears and pulls show up. people are the same: our weak points are where the damage happens, over and over, and we need to take the time to mend. however many times it takes, and for however long it takes. lingering on a hurt and re-grieving it often feels like a failure, but it's not.

when there's a tear, you mend it.
when there's a hurt, you mend it.
same scenario, different level of stigma.
but both need to happen.

with this shirt, the weak point has always been where the arm and bodice meet. both sides. i continually find holes there:

tonight, i mended with a contrasting stitch to show myself which generation of mend it is. next time, i'll use a different colour thread.

Sunday, 6 May 2012

you know what's the most amazing thing? spending time with kids. they combine perception and enthusiasm with a flexible & curious mind. and, once they decide where they're going, they run. they do not walk. there's something to be said for that.

my mending today was kidlet time. i.e.: spending time with the two sweet and wonderful offspring of a family i know.

one of the adults and the two kids and i went to a beltane ritual today on a friend's land in the middle of a green, green patch of forest to celebrate life and the sources of life, set some intentions for the fertile season, eat together, dance around the maypole and generally make merriment.

it was beautiful.

during the ritual, the woman who was leading the proceedings said something that stuck with me: "this land once was wild." in paganism, it's really common for the earth and the human body to be seen as interchangeable, so i instantly thought about the people standing around the circle. these bodies, these territories – some occupied, some struggling, some liberated. perhaps a mix, depending on the day?

but no one exemplifies liberation like kids. so long as they've been nurtured and loved, they radiate a free body, spirit and mind. i remember back to being a kid: running...always running, the joy of a body, laughing freely and crying loudly whenever it was warranted, doing and wearing what feels good and reaching freely for the hand of a new friend without a second thought.

tonight, my mending was to go for a walk and listen and write down what i heard. sometimes, if i'm feeling a lot all at once and don't know what to do with it, i'll go out and wander amongst other people and keep my ears open. you'd be surprised what it can do.

it's not like i purposely decided to do that tonight, but as i walked it started happening. maybe it was because i left my phone at home and didn't feel rushed? in any case, there i was: tuning in and taking note.

as i passed twosomes and groups and solo walkers, i realized that this, the mundane, is the greatest beauty we have. it's the sound of life continuing despite everything: the regular rush of passing buses, the pattern of footfall, the warp and weave of conversation, the relentless repetition of routine, the worries and the victories and the changes that either make a pass at us or pass us by.

it's all moving so much and so quickly, and it's made up of these small moments.

when a man squeezes his girlfriend's hand and asks her so tenderly, "do you want a slice of carrot cake?"

when a woman takes a drag of her cigarette and, on the exhale, she says, "he supports me in everything i do. ev-er-y-thing."

when a girl in heels clicks a crescendoed approach from behind me, and she warns her friend, "be careful."

it's this love and joy and worry. it's eating and getting hungry. it's having too much inside and aiming your tongue at the words you need. it's shyness and missed moments. it's the pride and pathos of risk. how things ache less in movement than in stillness. that beating heart of yours. how it likes to move.

we're living this world; it's not living us.
maybe it would help to remember that?
we're not alone. not really.
listen.
beauty is a collision.
it sets off the chill of the night.

a few weeks ago, i started mending my relationship to sex. actively. heh heh. i know...i know...too lecherous, right? :P

okay, i'll just tell you the story instead. i've been pretty gun-shy about sex and dating since the breakup last fall. probably even before then.

but, for a couple months now, i've been all about this whole openness and spontaneity thing – which you already know because i've written about it here. i've been focusing all my energy on engaging rather than withdrawing, admitting rather than hiding and showing rather than telling. (if you know what i mean... :P) and it has made SUCH a difference!

it might be partly the influence of spring, and all this teeming life energy springing up everywhere, but it feels like a whole new world out there for me. one that requires less effort. one that induces more calm and joy. one where i'm more confident and more vulnerable at the same time. who knew that was possible?

one of the coolest (and most unexpected) side effects of this openness thing is that i've been having more things come to me. usually, i ask people out rather than being asked out. i lean in for the first kiss. i ask for help rather than having it offered. not lately. lately, it's been flowing like a fountain, baby!

my mending project tonight is going to be my sheets. one of the things that i noticed when i took my things out of storage this week is that my sheets are very much the worse for wear...

they need attention, so mend them i will!

i took a regular needle and thread to the tears for some on-the-spot mending. it feels so damn important to be doing this. to set the scene properly for lovin' and self-lovin'.

a foundation, if you will.

oh, and to my detractors who would suggest that beige sheets invite boring sex, i say this: may what's happening between the sheets ALWAYS be 100 times more exciting than the sheets themselves.

Tuesday, 1 May 2012

i think it's cool that i was surrounded by such devoted and awesome worker bees on may day; all of us working toward the same goal. there was a lot to do and so much grace despite time pressures and physical tiredness. we got shit done with minimal complaint and maximum fun. so many silly voices and much car singing.

i also think it's cool that i'm making this big life transition on beltane: the high day of fertility and love. may my creative life be rich in this cozy new home of mine. may there be much good company given and received in this space. may only warmth and passion and compassion and love and mutual support pass between people here.

it's my very last night staying with the lovely lili k. tomorrow i move into my own place. i don't know where the time went, but i've already spent a third of the year here. wow.

this has been a safe, warm place to cocoon. a place to come back from numbness and despair and start to be who i am again. it's not an overstatement to say i've come back to life here. it's been my cozy cave. a place to giggle and cry and sing silly songs and complain and worry and cook and dream and write and freak out and talk about things. i'm so grateful to have lived here with one of the most loving humans i've ever met. i know that i'm safe and loved and welcome here in a way that's unmarred by doubt. that's a rare and precious thing.

thank you, lili.
know that i will shelter you anytime.
in any way you need.

in thinking about the year so far, i realized something: these last four months, i've been mending my happiness. it was tattered and sagging when i arrived at lili's at the end of 2011. now, while i'm certainly still marked by what i've lived, my happiness is whole again. and growing. it's happened so slowly and steadily, that i hadn't really noticed the transformation until today.

this afternoon, as i was packing my things, i came across a tassel. it belongs to the pillow pictured above. when i bought the pillow at a small buddhist store on bank street a few years back, it was supposed to be a reminder about spiritually-oriented happiness; to aim for contentment rather than gratification. one by one, all the tassels on the pillow have fallen off in the last year – symbolic much??? *laugh* when i left my ex's house in december, it was sudden and without most of my things. but this pillow was one of the essential things i grabbed on the way out.

the pillow says:
happiness. when one's spiritual needs are met by an untroubled innerlife. happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.

tonight, i'm going to put the first tassel back on the happiness pillow. as i unpack and settle into my new place, i imagine i'll find the other tassels, which are tucked away in boxes somewhere. and i'll sew them back on, one by one. it seems appropriate somehow: a gradual process merits a gradual mend.

here's a picture with the first tassel sewn back on:

wish me luck in moving my life out of storage tomorrow!
life life life. thank you.